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Letter in response to attack by member of the public on the
organisation promoting proposals for a new train station at Reston,
East Berwickshire
in the Berwickshire News, January 2008
Sir,
George Sanderson Jr, (June 7th and May 24th ) in his attack on
Barrie Forrest and RAGES, displays breathtaking arrogance, for he
lacks both knowledge of the Reston project or, it seems, empathy
with the people of East Berwickshire. The reintroduction of local
services for a population of 20,000 in Berwickshire is vital to
allow access to services, further and higher education and
employment opportunities and, let us not forget, family and friends,
on an equitable basis to our counterparts across Scotland. Tourism
should also be a winner.
I have not seen the STAG Appraisal commissioned by the Council,
but Census data reveal East Berwickshire ward has a similar average
distance to place of work or study (23 miles) as North Berwick
Coastal ward and Dunbar / East Linton. We also have a similar number
of people in employment or studying (all circa 5,000). However,
while North Berwick (7.4%) and Dunbar/East Linton (5.7%) have good
utilisation rates for trains as the main means of travel, in East
Berwickshire it is just 2.1%, with just 99 using trains daily, as of
2001. Matching the North Berwick figure would raise use to circa 350
or matching Dunbar would mean 275 passengers per day. A lot has
changed since then and I think these figures could be surpassed.
Given the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (£600 million and rising),
and the £500 million tram project that effectively only replaces
one of the best bus routes in the city, will the people of Edinburgh
fund these new services themselves? If not, why then should
taxpayers in our community help fund Edinburgh's grandiose projects,
while he would deny us a basic service on a line that already
traverses our beautiful landscape without a single station? Undoing
the damage done here by Beeching would cost less than 0.5% of the
capital cost of Edinburgh's status projects and help relieve
congestion.
SNP canvass returns from East Berwickshire (population 10,300)
were enlightening. We gathered hard data from the Eyemouth area
(population 3,000), that indicate that 16% of voters responding
stated that they would be regular users of a new service, and 56%
stated they would be occasional users. In addition, almost 16%
supported the project even if they would not use it themselves. In
fact, of those responding, only 12% did not support the Reston
proposals.
We in the SNP back the aims of RAGES and will gather further data
from voters in the area to build a robust evidence for our use in
lobbying our colleagues in the Scottish Government.
Your faithfully
Paul Wheelhouse, Berwickshire SNP |
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